Key Takeaways:
- Various factors can affect your home’s water quality, including agricultural and urban runoff, aging treatment systems, and extreme weather.
- Poor water quality increases your exposure to contaminants like bacteria, heavy metals, and chemicals that can make you sick.
- How to improve water quality at home starts with requesting a free water report from Tyent so you know what contaminants are in your water supply.
- The most effective way to improve your home’s water quality is installing a water filtration system, like the one found in Tyent’s line of cutting-edge water ionizers.
The average American family uses over 300 gallons of water per day at home, for everything from doing laundry to cooking dinner to staying hydrated. Just turn on the tap for instant access to treated water.
But just because your tap water is treated doesn’t mean it’s safe. Strains on water supplies and aging water treatment systems can put the quality of your source water into question, among other potential issues. For example, up to 300,000 main breaks happen in the U.S. every year, disrupting supply and risking tap water contamination. As such, you might be wondering how to improve water quality at home and ensure your tap water is always safe.
Water plays too important a role in your life to always be wondering: Is tap water safe? Keep reading to find out why water quality is important, the main factors that can affect how clean and safe your water is, and exactly how to improve water quality at home.
Why is Water Quality Important?
Preserving water quality is essential for safeguarding both human health and the environment. Although it’s true that the water cycle continuously returns water to Earth, it’s not always returned in the same quantity or quality, which can contribute to a variety of negative side effects.
Poor water quality increases your exposure to contaminants like bacteria, heavy metals, and chemicals that can make you sick. Consuming or using contaminated water can lead to both acute illnesses (vomiting, diarrhea) and serious medical conditions (organ damage, cancer).
When water quality is poor, it can also reduce the lifespan of your appliances, lead to costly plumbing repairs (think: corrosion and scaling), and even cause skin irritation when you shower or clean your home.
What Affects Water Quality?
A variety of factors can affect the quality of your home’s water. These include:
- Physical Factors: Sediment, dust, and other solid particles in water can alter its clarity, color, and overall appearance.
- Chemical Factors: Substances that aren’t naturally found in water, such as pesticides, fertilizers, and heavy metals can lead to severe health problems, not to mention harm aquatic life and wildlife.
- Biological Factors: Exposure to pathogens like bacteria, parasites, and viruses, can trigger diarrhea, stomach cramps, vomiting, and breathing problems, among other symptoms.
- Environmental Factors: Storms, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters can disrupt access to clean water and trigger contamination. Meanwhile, droughts cause lower source water levels, which can contribute to higher concentrations of contaminants in the remaining water.
- Human Activities: Used water from your home becomes sewage and wastewater. Faux pas like flushing old prescription drugs or pouring household chemicals down the drain can contaminate your local water supply.
How to Improve Water Quality at Home
If you’re concerned about your home’s water quality, there are steps you can take to turn things around. Learning how to improve water quality at home starts here.
Test Your Water Regularly
Knowing what contaminants are in your water is the only way to make sure your water filtration system is equipped to eradicate them. The EPA recommends testing your water annually to establish a record of water quality, which can be helpful in solving future problems.
Ready to find out what’s in your water? You can get a precise water quality report from Tyent absolutely free—no water sample required!
Contact Tyent for your free water report.
Install a Water Filtration System
One of the most effective ways to improve your home’s water quality is installing a water filtration system. Choose a filter combination that not only tackles contaminants specific to your source water, but has a low micron rating. Smaller micron ratings equal finer filtration and cleaner water, with the filtration system found in Tyent water ionizers far outshining the competition.
Tyent ionizers are fully equipped with a 0.01 micron dual Dialapure filtration system, which offers the same caliber of filtration used in kidney dialysis machines. The system removes over 200 dangerous contaminants from your source water, including heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and 100% of lead.
Tyent water isn’t just the cleanest—it’s also the healthiest, best water to drink. Tyent water ionizers transform ordinary tap water into hydrogen-infused alkaline water, the potential health benefits of which include more energy, less brain fog, better digestion, and a stronger immune system.
This Tyent water ionizer review can help you choose the best model for your lifestyle.
Use a Water Softener to Prevent Hard Water
Hard water contains high levels of minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, and iron. Excess minerals in your water makes soaps and detergents less effective, leaves a chalky residue on your plumbing fixtures and other surfaces, and causes limescale buildup in your pipes that can reduce water pressure and lead to clogs.
Scaling can also negatively impact the efficiency and lifespan of appliances that require water to function, such as coffee makers and dishwashers. Installing a water softener filter to remove the problematic minerals from your water supply is the primary way to hit the brakes on these issues.
However, soft water systems—especially RO water systems—take mineral removal too far, stripping water to the point of it no longer being a healthy way to hydrate. (Learn more about the dangers of reverse osmosis water.)
Enter the Tyent Soft Water Buddy, a remineralization filter designed for use with water softeners. The pre-filter contains 50% Calcite and 50% Corosex, white marble and magnesia-based media that neutralize acidic low-pH water and ensure your body isn’t robbed of the essential minerals it needs from drinking water.
Try the Soft Water Buddy and experience the difference for yourself.
Install High-Efficiency Appliances
Installing water-saving fixtures and appliances can help to reduce the strain on local water sources and improve water quality as a result.
Energy efficient dishwashers and washing machines use up to 30% less water than older appliances. Low-flow fixtures, like faucets and showerheads, use up to 50% less water without affecting water pressure, while dual-flush or low-flow toilets can save several gallons of water per flush.
Regularly Clean and Maintain Plumbing Fixtures
Kitchen and bathroom faucets can become a breeding ground for bacteria, mold, and mineral buildup. Not only can these contaminants transfer to the water that flows from your faucets and showerheads, but the mineral buildup can lead to reduced water flow and eventually damage your fixtures.
Your faucets and showerheads should be deep-cleaned roughly 1-2 times per year—every three months if you have hard water. Also check the condition of your faucet aerators (the screens on the ends of your faucets) to see if they need replacing.
If you’ve had the same faucets and showerheads for 10-15 years, you may want to consider replacing them. As plumbing fixtures age, they’re prone to accumulating rust and corrosion that can affect water quality and possibly affect water flow.
Properly Dispose of Household Chemicals
Hazardous chemicals, such as harsh cleaning agents, prescriptions, and pesticides, should never be poured down the drain or flushed. Similarly, storm drains aren’t meant to handle chemicals like motor oil, antifreeze, and solvents. What goes down your drains eventually ends up in your water.
80% of the world’s wastewater flows back into the environment completely untreated. Opting for eco-friendly cleaners, flushing human waste and toilet paper only, and participating in local hazardous waste programs are all ways to protect your source water from further contamination.
How to Test Water Quality at Home
There are multiple ways to test water quality at home, including:
- Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR): You should receive an annual CCR from your local water supplier, which provides details about your water quality. Otherwise, find them online using the EPA’s Find Your Local CCR search function.
- Tyent Water Quality Report: Not only will Tyent send you a free water report that details exactly what’s in your source water, but Tyent’s water quality associates will be on standby to advise you on what to do next—no strings attached. Request your free water report today!
- At-Home Water Tests: An at-home water test can help you gauge your home’s water quality. They typically involve using strips, solutions, or meters that either change color or offer measurements to indicate contaminant levels. However, accuracy can vary and the results aren’t as comprehensive as professional testing.
- Professional Water Testing: The EPA recommends using test kits that involve sending a water sample to a certified lab. However, these tests can cost hundreds and it can take weeks before you receive results.
Looking for a simple, fast way to test your home’s water quality that doesn’t cost a fortune? Tyent tracks water quality data for every major municipality in the United States and can give you the precise contents of your water within hours—and at no cost to you.
Get in touch now for your free water report! No water sample required.
More on How to Improve Water Quality
Still have questions about how to improve water quality at home? Below are answers to frequently asked questions on the subject.
How can I improve water quality in my area?
One of the best ways to improve water quality in your area is to keep hazardous chemicals out of your drains and storm drains, such as harsh cleaning agents, motor oil, and pesticides. Everything that goes down your drains eventually becomes part of your local water supply.
What are the 4 main factors affecting water quality?
The four main factors affecting water quality are:
- Agricultural Runoff: Farming and livestock production is the top source of contamination in rivers and streams in the United States.
- Urban Runoff: Any hazardous chemicals that end up poured down drains, flushed down toilets, and washed down storm drains eventually enter the water supply.
- Aging Treatment Systems: Aging and overwhelmed sewage treatment systems release more than 850 billion gallons of untreated wastewater each year.
- Extreme Weather: Floods, hurricanes and other extreme weather events can lead to water contamination.
How can we make water more effective?
The best way to make water more effective is to invest in a Tyent water ionizer. Tyent ionizers produce alkaline hydrogen water, which is antioxidant-rich and has a high pH. Among the vast number of potential health perks, drinking alkaline hydrogen water helps neutralize acids in the body, improve digestion, boost energy, and cut through brain fog. You have to hydrate anyway, so why not do so with the healthiest drinking water possible?
Improve Water Quality at Home with Tyent USA
Given the number of factors that can impact water quality, spanning everything from agricultural runoff to extreme weather, the importance of learning how to improve water quality at home cannot be understated.
The most effective way to improve your home’s water quality is installing a top-notch water filtration system, like the cutting-edge system found in Tyent water ionizers. Tyent’s 0.01 micron dual Dialapure filter removes over 200 dangerous contaminants from your water, including heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and 100% of lead.
Tyent also offers custom pre-filter options to maximize the quality of your source water. Find out exactly what’s in your water by requesting a free water quality report, then order the exact pre-filters needed to make your water as clean and safe as possible.
The health benefits of drinking enough water are even greater when that water is dispensed from a Tyent water ionizer. Tyent ionizers transform your tap water into antioxidant-packed alkaline water which can give you increased energy, radiant skin, and a stronger immune system.
Ready to improve your home’s water quality? Try a Tyent water ionizer for 75 days, risk-free!
